'Dallas' EP Cynthia Cidre teases a big moment for John Ross and Pamela

There are only four episodes left in season 2 of Dallas, with two episodes airing at 8 p.m. ET tonight and two more airing next Monday. “As we get closer to the end, all those balls that we’ve had in the air have to land,” executive producer Cynthia Cidre tells EW. “So there’s a lot of revelations amongst these last four episodes. It’s just non-stop.” In fact, watching the first hour of next week’s season finale, “I told the editor, ‘Give me a moment. Let me go get some water,’ because it’s all paying off,” she says. “Even for me, it’s great fun to watch.”

Tonight, the battle continues between the Ewings and the evil triad of Cliff Barnes, Harris Ryland, and Gov. McConaughey, who’ve worked together to pin the rig explosion that killed pregnant Pamela’s twin babies on over-eager Christopher’s faulty equipment so the Ewings would be slapped with a massive fine they cannot pay now that the government has also seized their main oil well. More than ever before, Pamela (Julie Gonzalo) finds herself stuck in the middle as the Ewing boys — one her ex-husband, one her recent lover — try to turn her against her father, Cliff, who they believe orchestrated the “accident” (viewers know they’re right). Judging from the photo pictured, it’s going to be another emotional turn for Pamela and John Ross (Josh Henderson). “She’s just found out something terrible about her father, and she comes to him, because he had warned her and she didn’t want to believe it,” Cidre says. “He picks her up and brings her inside… Oh, and there’s sex, I think,” she adds, laughing.

Pamela deserves a (momentarily) happy ending after losing her twins in the brutal March 25 episode. Cidre says she and fellow exec producer Michael R. Robin spent a couple of weeks editing that scene in which the babies flatlined on the heart rate monitor, which was filmed with a green screen. “Then, of course, post-production puts in the actual monitor so it’s accurate, and somehow the scene didn’t work, and we had to completely recut the ending,” she says. “We were gonna have both of them die at the same time, and, for it to really be emotional, you had to see that one had passed away earlier, and then you felt that terror watching it: ‘Oh my god, what’s going to happen to the other one?’ It wasn’t until we got that — literally the Saturday before the episode aired on Monday — that it worked.”

Looking ahead to next week’s two-hour season finale, Cidre promises we will learn who shot J.R. — along with much of the show’s crew, whose scripts didn’t include the reveal. “Only the people involved in the scene itself could read that revelation,” Cidre says.